The last shall be first... Make sure to be the last!!!
The game is separated into two phases.
Phase one is a trick-taking game with simultaneous card selection. First we check for ties. The tie numbers are gone and then the highest card wins. Cards are 1 to 6. Four times per card.
If after the first check we have a 1 card and a 6, then the 1 card wins the trick.
So now all keep the winning trick cards and we are ready for phase 2.
Phase 2 is Russian roulette, a game of chance. We have 6 cards (bullet cards) in the middle of the table, as a revolver. 5 empty chambers and one with a bullet.
On your turn (beginning with the player with the most cards from phase one): You can draw a card (pull the trigger) or you can discard one card from that you collect before, to shuffle all open bullet cards back together and then draw one, you just spin the cylinder of the revolver, (no point to do it if you have to draw the first bullet) or you can discard as many cards as alive players in the game to pass your turn to the next player.
When you draw we check if you die or live from the bullet card. If you stay alive the game continues to the next player. If you die we shuffle the bullet cards and continue with the player with most cards.
The Black Plague and Hussite Wars have overcrowded the graveyard. Help the Bone Collector, a half-blind monk, by exhuming graves and arranging the skulls inside the crypt.
You are novice monks, competing to create the best arrangement of skulls.
Dig up graves from the graveyard to reveal cards, take cards into your hand to collect skulls, and arrange the cards from your hand into a stack. Whoever better honors the deceased’s last wishes will score more points.
The Bone Collector will then judge each player’s completed stack and declare one as the most exceptional.
—description from the publisher
Released in the June 2020 Board Game of the Month Club $20+ package.
Finalist (top 3) of Button Shy's 18 Card Challenge: Design a game about a real life location.
With your team's careful guidance, the city and the countryside are expanding and converging. With everything growing at a breakneck pace, you are now tasked with managing the entire region!
A 6-card combo pack that allows you to combine Sprawlopolis and Agropolis.
Unlike the original rules for both standalone games, this variant eliminates the use of card-passing. Rather, players shuffle each game deck individually, flipping a single card from each to reveal 2 scoring conditions. Then, a 3rd card is drawn at random from the 6-card combo pack to reveal the 3rd and final scoring condition. A separate card from this pack is used as the starting tile, displaying 2 "blocks" from those terrains included in each game respectively.
On a player's turn, they draw 1 card from each game deck and must choose 1 to play and 1 to discard. In this way, both game decks with run out at the same rate. End game occurs after the last 2 cards are drawn and played/discarded.
Players score for the largest 2 block groups from each game, lose points for individual roads, and score/lose points according to the 3 scoring condition cards.
Having developed dream cities in Sprawlopolis, it's now time to set your sights on the rolling countryside, where farm, ranches, and roads intermingle master plan, as ever, seems just out of reach.
Agropolis is a stand-alone expansion to Sprawlopolis, bringing the same card-laying, variable-scoring gameplay into a new setting: city blocks give way to orchards, wheat fields, livestock pens, and vineyards. As before, players draw three goal cards and then attempt to place cards one at a time to create a rural tableau that best satisfies those goals. New gameplay features help offset overly-powerful scoring combos and layer additional attributes onto certain types of terrain, providing even greater depth of gameplay without satisfying the original's signature elegance.
Agropolis can be played entirely on its own, but it can also combined with Sprawlopolis using special rules and goal cards provided in the combo pack mini-expansion.
In the first course, it was definitely in the soup. After that, it's not as clear. Perhaps in the Béarnaise sauce?
Regardles, two things are abundantly clear: someone is poisoning the guests at this party, and the wine that is being poured may be the last you ever taste.
In Vino Morte is a tiny little bluffing/deduction game.
In the game, the dealer will choose and distribute wine/poison cards and each player has an opportunity to keep theirs and drink it, or swap with another player. It's quick, fun and sneaky and works with a large group.
A collection of old fairy tales has been torn apart. Pages from different stories are all mixed together and strewn about. Can you find the connections between the scattered characters to put their stories back together? Reunite the characters in clever ways to win the game!
Wonder Tales is a quick tile-laying set-collection micro-game for two players.
Each of the 17 game cards is double sided, with the same fairy tale character on both sides, but with different colored highlights.
Players take turns placing cards on a shared tableau with their color showing. Once the tableau is full, scores are tallied depending on which combinations of characters and/or colors lie adjacent to each player's cards.
A game consists of 2-3 rounds, with the tableau shape changing each round.
Sunlight glaring through the windshield. Your favorite songs blasting through the speakers. Candy bar wrappers piled next to a warm drink in the cheap plastic cupholder. Your companion riding in the passenger seat, snapping pictures of landmarks as you settle into the hypnotic rhythm of the road. But be careful: this fun road trip could get dangerous as you drive through Death Valley.
Death Valley is a pocket-sized, push-your-luck, tableau building game for 1-2 players, with each traveler striving to assemble the best mix of cards in their Journey and Scrapbook in order to win the game.
Each turn, players will choose whether to assign a card to their Journey, or move cards from their Journey to their Scrapbook. Cards feature stars (points), special abilities (affect the value and position of cards), and some interesting facts about Death Valley.
Each card also has a hazard (Heat, Terrain, Flood or Animals) listed. Having 3 of the same Hazard visible in their tableau will cause the player to bust and lose all the progress in their Journey.
At the end of the game the player with the most stars in their Journey, plus any additional points from card abilities, is the winner.
Finalist (top 3) of Button Shy's 18 Card Challenge: Design a game about a real life location.
Death Valley National Park is a beautiful desert landscape of extremes. Enjoy its life and scenery to build the best tableau of Death Valley attractions while also pushing your luck and being cautious of the desert heat and other hazards.
You own the only inn within a hundred miles: the questionable prestigious Ugly Gryphon Inn. Your patrons are rowdy and rude, but they are the only ones around. In order to keep the debt collectors at bay, but to do so you must manage some painfully particular, peculiar patrons.
In The Ugly Gryphon Inn, you’ll be tasked with managing your patrons’ various needs to ensure they all get a good night’s rest. Each turn, you’ll send one drowsy patron up to their room, then check to make sure all your patrons are sleeping soundly. If something’s irking them, they might raise a fuss, so keep an eye on what they need as you go. Afterwards, you’ll usher in more guests and keep an eye on the bar to make sure there’s no trouble. There’s never a moment to rest in The Ugly Gryphon Inn!
After you've run out of cards in the deck, then count how many patrons you have in the inn. Do not include patrons in the bar. If you have 7 or more patrons in the inn - you’ve won! If you have less than 7, then you have lost.
Government officials are plotting to undermine democracy! They need to exchange documents and money in secret, but a pair of investigative journalists are getting suspicious of their activities. Will the intrepid reporters be able to expose the corruption before it's too late?
Two corrupt politicians need to exchange messages and dirty money while two investigators try to intercept their actions and publish them in the international media.
Winner of Button Shy's 18 identical cards challenge, Interceptor is a game for 4 people in pairs that will sit facing your partner.
The cards have two sides: money or message. Players must place one of their 5 cards with one side forward and make a pre-arranged secret code for their partner to place the same side forward. Corruptors should try to avoid investigations by placing the opposite side that their opponents put, while investigators want to put on the same side as their opponents.
After 4 cards on the table, they are all revealed and losers lose their cards. Whoever runs out of cards loses the game.
But there is one more thing. If you discover your opponent's code, you can say "Interceptor!" and make a guess. If you're wrong, you lose a card, if you get it right, you win the game instantly.
It is a fast and very fun game, great for playing several games in a row.
—description from the designer
Winner of Button Shy's 18 Card Challenge: Design a game with 18 identical cards.
Avignon is a quick influence manipulation card game in which the two players are rival candidates for Pope in the 14th century. Players gain influence by petitioning members of the medieval Church, such as Cardinals, Nobles, and Knights, and using the characters' unique powers to pull the character cards over to their side of the table (their congregation), or force an opponent to push cards towards them. The first player to get three characters into their congregation wins.
You've climbed all of the mightiest mountains, yet there’s one towering titan that’s always eluded you: the mountain where anything can happen. In the whisper-thin air the paths twist and shift as you climb, stranding the unprepared and confounding the overconfident. Do you have what it takes to summit this perilous peak?
In Unsurmountable, players will be tackling the rocky slopes of an ever-changing mountain. As the game unfolds, they must place the next piece of the path carefully in order to complete a route to the top while simultaneously meeting any additional goals for the round. It may sound like a walk in the park, but this puzzle has plenty of pitfalls to keep players on their toes.
Unsurmountable is the next title in our Simply Solo line, following Food Chain Island and Ugly Gryphon Inn. These titles were designed by Scott Almes for single-player only, focusing on elegant rules that create complex situations. Like the previous two games, Unsurmountable delivers a fun puzzle that’s sure to hit the table again and again.
Some of the biggest questions in the world of science may be answered by studying quarks, the smallest of particles. The problem with trying to study quarks is that you can’t find just one quark; you need to find them in groups called hadrons, or some other exotic particles, like the Pentaquark.
In Pentaquark, you are trying to give science a little helping hand by collecting the five quarks that form this particle at the detector of a massive particle collider. Move cards you need to the detector, discard others so they may come back as anti-quarks, and try to minimize the number of quarks scattered and lost. If too many cards are removed from the game, the Pentaquark has slipped through undetected once again!
On this forgotten island in a tiny corner of the ocean the animals are hungry! Your goal is to influence the wildlife - and arrange their meals - so there is only one animal left!
Jackhammers chattering, trucks beeping, engines roaring, the sounds of construction are everywhere. Sprawlopolis is growing and YOU are in charge of it all. The last team of planners couldn't cut it, so the city turned to your team, the best of the best. If anyone can turn this tiny town into a thriving civic center it's you.
The Black Plague and Hussite Wars have overcrowded the graveyard. Help the Bone Collector, a half-blind monk, by exhuming graves and arranging the skulls inside the crypt.
You are novice monks, competing to create the best arrangement of skulls.
Stew is a press-your-luck, partial knowledge game. You and your fellow players take on the role of a farmer collecting items from the garden to make a stew. There are six vermin that want to eat your stew before you do. Draw a card and add it to your stew or feed some of the vermin to protect your pot. Make sure you do not wait too long, or your fellow farmers might eat your stew.
Coming soon!
